Do your homework, someone in China is starving for your job

Initially, he talks about teenagers when referring to a quote from Thomas Friedman, but if you step back a bit, “do your homework” could – and should – be applied to all of us.

Perhaps Tom felt it was easier to make the point about China and India (especially given the “clean your plate” anecdote), but it really isn’t about China or India at all (more on that in a moment).

It’s about competition in general.

Depending on what you do, your fiercest competition might come from Seattle (Amazon), Bentonville (WalMart), Guangzhou, Pittsburgh, Mumbai, Memphis (FedEx) or right down the street.

Once someone has put you out of business (CPSIA and similar issues notwithstanding), it really doesn’t matter where the competition came from, whether it was WalMart, Amazon, Radio Shack or Joe’s Electronics.

No matter how you slice it, the people selling all those cheap Chinese-made electronics (or whatever) put you out of business.

Or your competition ships all their customer service or manufacturing jobs offshore, cutting their costs drastically. “Suddenly”, you can’t compete.

Once your payroll checks start bouncing, you’re still history, no matter what the cause.